Eat: Spiked with satsuma zest or chiles and lime, flavored butters amp up every dish.
Chef Nick Cobarruvias, of San Francisco’s Son’s Addition, uses these easy-to-make compound butters to turn his pancakes and waffles into citrus-kissed delights. There’s a limechile butter for your summer corn, too.
Butter is not something that comes to mind as needing much enhancement. It’s already a sure-fire way to make anything better. But over at San Francisco’s year-old Son’s Addition, the Mission District restaurant run by chef Nick Cobarruvias and his wife, Anna, the chef has found ample ways to make butter, well, better.
Cobarruvias, who honed his skills working with chefs Traci Des Jardins and Jennifer Puccio, tops his grilled hanger steaks, for example, with an uni butter, flecked with charred onion and pickled shallot. But he also knows that just a simple touch can make all the difference. In his hands, corn on the cob gets a chile-lime butter treatment and pancakes or waffles, topped with his citrus-kissed satsuma butter, delight his two little daughters.
“Satsuma butter is great for sweet stuff, like pancakes and waffles, as the salt helps balance out the sweetness of maple syrup. My kids love it!” Cobarruvias says. The chile-lime butter “is really great for grilled corn, but could go really well on any grilled vegetable and especially well with thinner steaks, like skirt steak. It is a bit spicy, so for those faint of heart, you can easily substitute any dried chile and remove the seeds. It especially works well with guajillo or New Mexico chiles.”
Here are Cobarruvias’ compound-butter tricks for making everything you cook this season even better.
Satsuma Butter
Note: This recipe makes a pound of tangerine-spiked butter. Feel free to cut the recipe, as needed.
INGREDIENTS
1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened Grated zest from 3 satsuma tangerines 2 tablespoons sea salt, or to taste 2 tablespoons sugar, or to taste
DIRECTIONS
Using an electric stand mixer and the whisk attachment, combine all the ingredients and beat until the butter is light and fluffy.
Chile-Lime Butter
INGREDIENTS
1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened 1½ ounces chile de arbol, toasted
Zest and juice of 2 limes 1 tablespoon kosher salt
DIRECTIONS
Pull the butter out to soften at room temperature. Toast the chiles in a 350-degree oven until fragrant and bright red, then place on a plate to cool. Once cool, blend in a blender or in a spice grinder until finely ground. In a stand mixer or food processor, combine the butter, chile, lime juice and zest and salt, processing until the mixture is well-combined and fluffy.
— Nick Cobarruvias, Son’s Addition, San Francisco